Nā moʻolelo · stories
Small stories, as Palani tells them — and as her liner notes told them fifty years ago. These are the pieces that do not fit in a biography but are how she is actually remembered.
Palani / Aunty Alice
Aunty Alice Nāmakelua learned to play slack key guitar at a very early age in Honokaʻa on the island of Hawaiʻi. She had a very special connection to the land and told me that she loved to go into the forest areas and just play slack key guitar and sing to the birds.
In her later life, she taught many students to play slack key guitar. I was very fortunate to learn and appreciate her talents just like my friend George Kuo and many others.
Palani / Aunty Alice
When she was living on Oʻahu, her doctor told her they would have to cut off her leg due to an infection. She contacted her Mom and was told to come back home to Honokaʻa. At home her Mother applied various herbs and wrapped her leg with tī leaves. After a while her leg healed.
Aunty liked to go and hear Hawaiian music being sung. The singers would get very nervous because they knew she would correct their Hawaiian words if they pronounced it wrong. She mentioned one singer that sung of a “dead fish” in Hawaiian when he meant to be singing of his “sweet heart.”
One night I was playing slack keys with her and I heard a beautiful voice singing. I assumed Aunty was singing, but when I looked up she was not singing. Aunty said that it was very common for her to hear someone singing while she played her guitar.
This was an experience that I will never forget.
From the 1974 liner notes
Five minutes more and the baby would have been born on horseback. It was August 12, 1893, and Carolyn Sean had ridden about 30 miles from Papaʻaloa to Honokaʻa, to birth to the house of her brother, John Kanakaoluna, and his wife. The child had been promised to them, to hānai — adopt in the old way — for John and his wife had no children, and his sister had several.
They called her Kuʻuleialohapoinaʻole: my beloved, unforgettable lei. Hawaiian style, she always knew and often visited her real mother, brothers and sisters. In that home she began to learn music and hula — her mother was a noted singer and dancer — even steel guitar, then a very new thing; probably the first girl to do so. At both homes, she only spoke Hawaiian.
Alice remembers fondly the home of her uncle and aunt, Abe and Minerva Fernandez, of Kalihi. They always asked her to come when they expected a visit from the Queen, because Liliʻuokalani loved the way Alice prepared Hawaiian food, massaged her, and sang to her. Alice treasures beautiful mementos given to her by the Queen.
